Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor Paperback – March 11, 2013

This is the type of book that we rarely stumble upon. We would not expect a book that exposes the relationship between environmentalism of the poor, environmental writer-activists and a proposed concept of slow violence to be a pleasant, beautiful read. I would expect such a book to be interesting, useful, innovative, but still adept of the sterile, academic tone and prose. But that's not the case. By drawing examples from different writers-activists and their different circumstances (micro-minorities in the oil-rich but socially poor Nigerian delta, post-war environmental calamities in Iraq, an industrial spill-off in India and others), Nixon not only dissects ideas and underlying political, aesthetic and historical concepts, but also elegantly defends his hypothesis while he does all that.His hypothesis is that environmental degradation and the violence it entails is particularly difficult to pinpoint and to bring to the foreground of media and popular culture because of its lack of spectacular, condensed and vivid manifestation. Environmental damage causes what Nixon describes as slow violence, violence that is spread throughout time and space, that dissipates slowly in an area not clearly defined for months, years or even centuries (as in the case of radiation in nuclear test sites). This violence is also invisible since it can reach the cellular level through mutation and other forms of very intimate violence. The author then takes the challenge of how to describe and make this type of violence more visible and the answer he finds is through literature, with its linguistic richness, its power to tell concrete, tangible and personal stories and its various tools to turn attention to the intimate, often invisible circumstances around us. He then proceeds to locate these writers in the "Global South" that turned to literature as a way to raise the topic of environmentalism and slow violence in the attempt to show the existence of this violence to a larger audience. The result is astounding.

A deeply important book--not only for its precise and timely intervention at such a tenuous political/ecological moment, but for the accessibility, thoughtfulness, and grace of its delivery.Not only does this work broaden our thinking about the environmental politics in the sphere of the postcolonial, it allows us to think about violence itself in new ways. Specifically, violence not simply as an effect of imbalanced political histories, but violence as a text we have to learn (and relearn!) how to read. This is a contribution that directly faces the entanglement of neoliberalism, deepening toxification of natural spaces/resources, growing economic disparities, and a widespread cultural illiteracy about questions of global crisis itself. For this reason, it's a book that speaks across disciplinary contexts more effectively than any other, in recent environmental studies.Slow Violence is a text written in and for a cultural moment that struggles to see beyond the politics of the momentary. As such, it is an opportunity to learn to think differently about global crisis, not only in a variety of disciplinary contexts, but in the course of the everyday.

This is an important book. It makes one think differently about key issues of environmentalism -- pulling one out of the micro and forcing a macro view. Sadly, it will be read by many fewer people than it deserves. The fault of the book is the overwriting. The prose is beautiful, but there is simply too much wrapping paper around the gift.

Having been both a Geographer by profession and a moving Theologian by education, I thought that before I read Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor I was reasonably educated about Climate Change and world ethics. But Professor Nixon's book in many ways shook me to the core and laid out historical political and social events that left me searching for air to breathe. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor was for me a journey through literature, culture and politics that revealed much that has been kept below the radar of our awareness, and deeply stamps the American way of life complicity in our accelerating race to destroy the world as we know it.

Fantastic book. Engaging writing, self-reflective and not self-congratulatory, and important call to action to resist the most elusive problems of our time.

The author does a great job documenting global environmental tragedies and activists fighting against them.

One of the best books on conditions in low-income neighborhoods. Studies of poverty in America should begin with this book before moving on to any other discussions of poverty. Contemplation of environmental conditions as a factor in perpetuation of poverty and the problems associated with poverty is a must, and nobody does it better than this book.

Language is the way in which humans communicate, socialize and identify with each other. The nuances associated with understanding the spoken or written word is dependent on mutual experiences, interpretation or socialization. In order to effectively communicate it is necessary to understand the manner in which words are used. People give meaning to the words readily used and applied in our interactions within our culture, communities and schools. What happens if the definition changes?Rob Nixon, in Slow violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, illustrates for the readers the confusion generated as the working definition of everyday common language become weapons of mass destruction. The slow generative destruction of the environment and the people.